Virgin Money are having a bit of a mare at the moment. I have a prepaid credit card with them. Why have a prepaid credit card?, well it’s a security thing for buying things on the net, as the card can only spend what’s on there, so if you are buying stuff off the next you just put exact the money on the card and just spend what’s on there, but here’s the problem with my card. You know the three digit security number on the back of your card… well despite putting the right number in from the back of my card, they are not being accepted, as in these three numbers are not being linked to the correct card, so as yet I haven’t bought anything online.

I noticed in the Metro this morning a picture of Simon Cowell, so my guess is X-Factor is starting up again this weekend. Now don’t get me wrong, the show has it’s place and in terms of talent shows, I guess it has come a long way since “Opportunity Knocks”... but as least Opps Knocks was not just singing. Though Su Pollard did get beaten by a singin dog once...

It beggars belief that there are some people who go on to X Factor and honestly believe they can sing. I used to sing in the school and church choir, I have in my younger day whilst at Stationer’s Company School sung at St Paul’s Cathedral for the then Mayor of London. I’d been told whilst a regular church goer that I had a good voice…. But some 20 years on, I realise now that most of the time they were just saying it to keep my spirits up.

I’m not saying my voice is the worse in the world and if you give me the right song, I reckon I'm actually rather good actually, but I don’t fool myself and think, “actually, maybe I should go on X Factor and give them a rendition of Oh Come all Ye Faithful, or maybe, Oh Little Town of Bethlehem, or even Onward Christian Soldiers…It just amazes me how many people walk into that room with the judges and seem to think they have a right to get to the next stage. I’d rather they walked in there and said, “Look I don’t rate myself highly at all, in fact I’ve only come to get on TV and give the audience a bit of a laugh”….

One consolation about the weekend is Match Of The Day starts back and thankfully it’s not on ITV. Man do you remember when ITV got their mitts on Match Of The Day... what a shambles, the only good thing about Match Of The Day on ITV was the fact they used U2’s Beautiful Day as their theme tune, please God don’t let it happen again… after all remember what Billy Shanks said on how important football is… this coming from a Barnet supporter… we got hammered 4 to zip by Brighton during the week.

Let’s hope The Mag and I can beat whoever we are playing tonight at 10 Pin, 8 – 0 as we are playing to win, unlike the half the Olympiads who give the impression they are there to make up the numbers. One of the reasons why I like the Gymnastics, which I’ve been getting up at 4am for each morning, is the fact there are only 8 teams. I really think that the Olympics should go down the avenue of the football world cup, and there should be competitions held over the four years leading up to Olympics then basically the top sixteen people or teams in each sport turn up, have a series of round robins then knockout phases, cos quite frankly you do wonder why some teams even turn up...yeah yeah, I appreciate the whole ideal of the Olympics, but sometimes change is good... and on that note I shall say Peace, Unity, Love and Having Fun to yawl